Compassion & Accountability

The last couple of days have felt overwhelming.

If I were being honest I would actually frame the mix of sadness, shame, anger, frustration and stuckness within the timeline of when #metoo ceased to feel kind of far away and stood screaming at me in my living room through the body of my adult daughter.

If I were being really real I would move the timeline back to an ex who was so angry at me that what should have been a simple return of a Yankees cap and some other things left in my bedroom at my mother’s apartment turned into something that I only called rape inside my head.

But I don’t know if I have the capacity to be that honest or real right now. So I’ll just focus on the last couple of days.

I don’t know Junot Diaz personally. We have never hung out except for that one time in the mid 1990s when I danced with him at a fundraiser for Puerto Rican political prisoners at Clemente Soto Velez and he was not (contrary to his recollection) part of the Justice Committee of the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights. But as his star rose and as I hung on the periphery of the Latino lit scene and the not so periphery of the rising (and then falling) Latino blogosphere, I heard a lot of/about him besides all of his writing credits and accolades.

I heard about infidelities that on the real, I shrugged off, based on my experience with Latino men who couldn’t keep it in their pants or talk/be outside monogamy starting with my father who left my mom and married and had kids with la otra to the times I was hurt by la otra, especially when I was la otra.

Then I heard other things that made me more uncomfortable and downright angry as he was getting more and more praise for being a brilliant star as a Latino writer and a Latino man. He was being so real about how awkward he was, about how he was a perro, and he was building a reputation as someone who wanted to share his experience of moving through the literary world as a person of color through mentorship. I had heard about him taking advantage of women who would go to him for mentorship, this included the kind of creepy piropo that made people uncomfortable and more. I also heard from other Latino men within the Latino lit scene that they too knew of this.

These weren’t my stories. These weren’t my experiences to share. So instead, using the small but kind of critical platform and reputation I had as a media maker (blogger/writer/social media influencer/whatever the fuck you want to call me) to warn people to pull back all the praise a little and be critical. I did this on social media, on blogs, in comments and in person.

Para variar (sarcasm), I was called a hater, una cangreja guilty of quitate tu pa ponerme yo syndrome, and jealous.

Cool.

Except not.

Over the last few days I have received sincere communications from people I respect (and love) apologizing for defending him so hard. And right before that messages from fellow Latina writers/media makers/journalists sharing their reaction to Diaz’s sharing his own sexual abuse story.

My response/sense/feeling is the same. It’s a question and it’s something I’ve been grappling with actively for almost a year to answer : how do we hold compassion for those men (especially Latino men) who were harmed as children while at the same time holding them accountable and responsible for the harm they have caused women (especially women of color)? How do we move through and eliminate a culture of silence that felt like it was too hard to have a talented dique golden (male) child and be critical to how they behaved towards others who were especially vulnerable because they too wanted to be seen as writers of color? How do we challenge what is essentially a white supremacist literary scene that only allows for one poc writer to take the spotlight and others hold them up at any cost, at any sacrifice.

Accountability is beyond acknowledgement. Junot as more people are coming forward has publicly stated that he accepts responsibility.

Cool.

Except that’s not enough.

Where is the atonement and repair work that he will do with himself and the communities he is a part of?Acknowledgement is not an apology. It is not a commitment to do that hard work of healing trauma that caused other trauma.

How many of us are part of other communities (ie the non-profit world, the academic world, media, organizing ) where there are charismatic men of color who are known to some as abusers and because of a real fear of being locked out/called out we don’t say anything and even worse, award them (I can think of some off the top of my head which means that I too am complicit).

How do hold compassion for those that have caused harm while making sure there is accountability when they call harm to others/ourselves? Is this even possible?